If you are having a bad day, do yourself a favor and go see this one in a crowded theater. I did this myself last night after a rough one, and after it was all over, I WAS CURED. Incidentally, if you can see it in a crowded theater in which at least 75% of your fellow attendees are frat boys, as I did, that’s definitely the way to go. Once them boys start laughing, they can’t ever seem to stop, which is something I found infectious and delightful. And that’s despite the fact that, on the way out, I got stopped by one of them and told I had the most infectious laugh he’d ever heard. I would’ve been really flattered to hear that, actually, except that he was wearing a baseball cap on backwards and a Death Cab for Cutie tee-shirt, the sleeves of which he’d torn off to make it look tuff. It therefore seemed unwise to put too much stock in his judgment. I mean, if he’s not going to, why should I?

(By the way, ten points if you can give me a citation for the term “tuff” that was later made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze.)

Zachy G, I love you. And I’ll be darned if you don’t just look totally adorable with that baby. Which, in the context of what I just saw last night, seems like a really terrible thing to say. I apologize to mothers everywhere.

It was total religion to me too. After I read that book, I wrote all the words to Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” around the white edge of the sole of my Chuck Taylor low-tops. Because I though it was so poignant and cool. Still a lovely poem now that I’m grown up, of course, but a little on the cheesy side.

I’d love to see SE Hinton at Bumbershoot. I haven’t read anything of hers since the 80’s — I should see what else she did after I stopped paying attention!